How's He Doing? This Mayor Offers 47 Pages of Answers

By MIKE McINTIRE

Published: July 21, 2004

Abolish the Board of Education? Done.

Renovate police precinct stations? Not done.

Banish the City Hall press corps to Staten Island? Reconsidered.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's second annual report card on himself - his personal record of keeping, amending or breaking 381 promises he made during his 2001 campaign - is a mix of the serious, the mundane and the fanciful. By his own reckoning, Mr. Bloomberg improved his record from a year ago, having now fulfilled, or come close to fulfilling, 86 percent of his pledges.

Whereas Mayor Edward I. Koch just asked "How'm I doing?" to check the pulse of public approval, Mr. Bloomberg, in more technocratic fashion, released a 47-page spreadsheet yesterday entitled "2004 Campaign Accountability Statement," complete with codes, categories and year-to-year updates detailing each promise and its current status.

"We're releasing this status report on all our initiatives," the mayor said, "because I've always believed that when you make a promise, if you possibly can you keep the promise. Meeting that obligation is what every elected official ought to do."

The report was presented in the political theater of a street-corner news conference that even included the Brooklyn security guard, Anthony Santa Maria, whose skeptical comments to Mr. Bloomberg about politicians' truthfulness during the 2001 campaign inspired the mayor to track his own veracity. Even so, the report is rigorously apolitical, since rather than trumpet the biggest accomplishments first, it lists everything alphabetically by city agency.

As a result, the first item in the "done" column is a little-remembered promise to "make all relevant information available to the court at the earliest possible moment," which falls under the purview of the criminal justice coordinator. The last item in the "not done" category is a plan for the city to "take advantage of tax laws that allow interest and depreciation deductibility for privately owned buildings."

Among the most significant of the 196 vows he says he has fulfilled, Mr. Bloomberg lists starting the 311 telephone information and complaint system, new policies for holding superintendents and principals accountable for their schools' performances, and continuing efforts to reduce crime. Promises he said he was forced to reconsider include not raising taxes and not borrowing money to help balance the budget, both of which he abandoned after taking office with multibillion-dollar deficits.

Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the mayor, said the list, first released a year ago, was compiled by aides who searched for every pledge made by Mr. Bloomberg in 2001. Last year's report contained one fewer.

He said the new item was the tongue-in-cheek proposal to move the City Hall press room outside Manhattan.